


Vision

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Horror, M/M, Post-Canon, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 20:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10543910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: Newt and Hermann's new glasses have an odd prescription.





	

Newt had forgotten since last week that there was a bell on the optometrist’s door; it clanged as he pushed the door open a little too hard, and by the time his hand shot out to quiet it, everyone in the place was looking at him. 

“Sorry,” he said to everyone. Moving on from his embarrassment, he turned to the receptionist’s desk. “I’m here to pick up some glasses? Last name is Geiszler.” 

“We’ve got ‘em right here,” the receptionist said, and rolled her chair to the cabinet behind her desk. She double-checked the label before handing over the hard case. Newt looked inside; yep, those were the frames he’d picked out. 

“I’m also picking up for Hermann Gottlieb,” Newt said. “He’s my husband.” 

The receptionist nodded, clearly suppressing a laugh. “Yes, I remember you mentioned that a couple times when you guys were in for your exam.” Reining her amusement into a polite smile, she went back to the cabinet, checked the note that said that Newt was authorized to pick up Hermann’s glasses, and handed them over. 

Newt thanked her, and made sure to open the door a little more quietly on the way out. Only when he was out on the sidewalk did it occur to him that he had new glasses now, and should put them on. Not that it made a huge difference; his prescription hadn’t changed that much. Really, he’d only gone in because Hermann was going, and his frames were busted-up and cruddy anyway. These new frames were narrower, so that was going to take some getting used to. He put his old glasses in the hard case and slipped it, and Hermann’s case, into his jacket pockets. 

On the other side of the parking lot was a supermarket. It wasn’t the one he and Hermann usually went to, but it probably didn’t matter. Hermann had only asked him to pick up some eggs, a carton of milk, stuff he didn’t have a brand preference for. It was all on the list. 

Newt checked his pockets for the list, but it wasn’t in his jacket or his jeans. Where did he lose it? Eh, it didn’t matter. Newt was sure he remembered most of what was on it. Whatever he forgot, he’d make up for it by getting those cookies Hermann liked but never bought for himself. 

As he approached the automatic doors, Newt kept to the right, because he could see someone on the other side of the glass, on their way out. He strode inside as the doors whooshed open; only then did he see the other person clearly: though dressed in ordinary street clothes, their head was unmistakably a robot’s head. Newt only caught a glimpse, as the person brushed past him, but he definitely saw two bulging, unlidded human eyes and a row of perfectly straight human teeth, exposed to the gums, all set into several panels of steel and clusters of wires, which imitated the shapes and contours of a human face and skull. 

“That is an amazing cosplay,” Newt said, loud enough that the person might hear. But they did not turn around, or acknowledge him in any way. Newt tried to think of what convention might be happening in town that weekend, until it occurred to him that today was a Tuesday. He shrugged and continued inside. 

Immediately, he saw two more people wearing robot heads. He approached one and looked closer this time, wishing to admire their handiwork. But close up, it became apparent that these were not prosthetics or makeup. There were hollow spaces behind the eyes, and between the panels. A human head could not fit inside the visible configuration of metal components. 

To disguise his now clearly inappropriate scrutiny, he cleared his throat and hastily took off his glasses, making like he had to clean the lenses, and that was why his gaze had been lingering in one particular direction. When he lifted the glasses from his nose, the robot face and head disappeared. Instead, standing before Newt was an ordinary person, with a red baseball cap and a beard. (Those were about all the features Newt could make out, with his blurred vision.) 

Newt finished “cleaning” his glasses and put them back on, and the robot face reappeared. He went on his way with haste, not wanting to attract any more attention to himself. He made an awkward attempt to slow to a stroll as he moved to the magazine stand, from which vantage point he watched shoppers from behind an issue of GQ that he pretended to flip through. He saw a few more robot heads, not a lot. One of the cashiers had a robot head. It slid groceries across the scanner with two spindly mechanical hands. 

Newt pulled his old glasses out of his pocket and put them on. Through them, he saw nothing unusual. When he replaced them with the new glasses, he saw all the same robot heads and limbs, on all the same people. He was now too alarmed to stay a moment longer in the store, let alone do the shopping. He darted back out into the parking lot and locked himself in his car. 

He did his best thinking out loud. “Okay, _why_ are there robots everywhere?” he asked himself. “I am ready to accept that there _are_ robots everywhere. I am ready to accept how I _know_ there are robots everywhere.” 

Newt blinked. “Wait. Am I? “ 

He got out of the car and tromped back to the optometrist’s office. The bell rang too loudly again when he opened the door, but he didn’t care this time. 

The receptionist smiled at him. “Hello, Doctor Geiszler. Are you here to tell me again that you and Doctor Gottlieb are married?” 

“That sounds like something I’d do,” Newt said, “but actually I’m wondering, um, is the lab technician who made my lenses here today?” 

“I’m afraid not. That would have been Elias who made yours. He was only here for a few weeks, and then on Sunday he had a family emergency, and quit because he had to go home to Switzerland. Or Sweden. I don’t remember which.” 

“Uh, geez, okay.” Newt tapped his hands on the counter, trying to quickly think of another way to get his questions answered here. “Has anyone else been in asking for him?” 

The receptionist thought for a minute, pursing her lips with concentration, but shook her head. 

“But you’d remember if someone had. I mean, people don’t come in every day asking to meet the lens grinder, right?” As he said this, Newt looked around furtively for robots. There didn’t seem to be any in here. 

“Yeah, that doesn’t happen very often,” the receptionist said. “But everyone seems pretty happy with the work he did.  Is there a problem with your glasses?” 

“No, no problem,” Newt hastened to reply. “No problem at all! Sorry, I’ve got to go. Thank you!” 

Back outside, Newt scanned the parking lot for more robot people. There was another one coming out of the supermarket. Is that where they originated? Was the supermarket a front for a cyborg manufacturing facility? Newt had to stop himself there, and speculate for a moment on whether these were cyborgs or androids. He would need more data. 

On each side of the supermarket was a strip mall, and in one of those strip malls was The Laughing Gnome, the comics and game store he frequented. He had sort of made friends with Brian, the guy who ran it, though he had his own tabletop group that he played with at home, and so only came in occasionally to shop. Newt headed over there to see if it, too, had robot customers. 

Though it was only March, the air conditioning was turned up high – Brian confided to him once that it was to help minimize the torture of gamer funk – and Newt shivered at the blast of air as he opened the door. Some guys were at a table whom Newt had seen there before. Brian must have trusted them enough to leave them alone for a few minutes, because the counter was currently unmanned. 

“Brian here?” Newt asked. 

The gamers all maintained their hunched posture, and all but one continued studying the miniatures on the table. One turned his head and said, “He’s in the back. He said he’d be back shortly.” 

Newt nodded, and pretended to look around while he waited. From the back of the store, a door squeaked, and a voice he recognized as Brian’s called, “Hey, Newt!” When Newt looked up, he saw a robot advancing in his direction. It asked, “You caught up on _Kingdom of Monsters_ yet?” 

Newt made like he was scratching his head, tilting his glasses to confirm that without them, he saw Brian. This was even more unsettling; Brian was not one of the weary, silent strangers perfunctorily elbowing their way through crowded aisles in a soulless supermarket. This was a pleasant, chatty guy that he’d known for several months. 

Newt figured if he had a conversation with Brian, it would give him a chance to get a better look at the robot features. He shuffled a bit and grinned. “Ha! I’m still on _Rage Across Time_ , dude. I got a lot of catching up to do. You know I was busy for a few years with the _real_ kaiju?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I already thanked you for saving the world,” Brian said with an exaggerated dismissive gesture. “But what have you done for us _lately_?” 

The two of them talked amicably about comics, and about the newest edition of Pathfinder. Newt rambled a bit about how his group was still getting used to the rule changes. But he was hardly paying attention to what he or Brian was saying; he was focused on the visible diodes that dotted Brian’s face, the actuators that were making his eyes twitch, and the thin bundles of wires snaking over his temples and down his neck. These mechanical parts provided Brian with his inquisitive expression, the quirk of his eyebrow and the tilt of his head as Newt absently described his Inquisitor. Brian’s friendly quips were passing through those chillingly exposed teeth. 

“Well hey, man,” Newt said when he’d seen all he could see, “I was just stopping in for a quick minute.” He pointed in the general direction of the supermarket. “Gotta go do some grocery shopping. So uh, take it easy!” He made an awkward exit, even more unsettled than he’d been when he walked in. 

Newt checked his watch. “Oh man, Hermann’s gonna be pissed,” he muttered to himself. “I told him I’d be home with the groceries by now.” 

The instant he thought of Hermann, his stomach dropped and his heart began to race. What if…What if _Hermann_ was a robot? No, it couldn’t be. There was no way his Hermann could be one of those things. But Newt forgot then and there about the groceries. He had to go home _now_ , and find out for sure. Just confirm what he already knew. That’s what he told himself. 

On the drive home, Newt nearly had a collision at a busy intersection, so preoccupied was he with checking out other cars for robot drivers, and when he wasn’t seeing any, listing off all the reasons why Hermann couldn’t possibly be a robot. 

When he burst in the front door, the first thing he saw was Hermann, sitting on the sofa, reading a book. Just normal, human Hermann. Newt sighed explosively, his hand to his chest, never in his life so happy to see that dorky, beautiful face. 

Hermann looked up at Newt over his glasses. “Good lord, what is the matter, darling? Where are the groceries?” 

“God, I love it when you call me that.” Newt dove for Hermann, planting several kisses on his stupid, handsome human face. “Hermann, listen.” Newt sat next to Hermann on the couch, his knees touching Hermann’s, leaning in, needing to convey that Hermann absolutely must take him seriously. “I have to tell you something. You trust me, right? You know that my crazy ideas aren’t always crazy.” 

“Yes, accepting that has been one of the hardest compromises I’ve had to make in this relationship,” Hermann said dryly. 

“Okay, so, oh my God, where do I start.” Newt suddenly remembered that he had Hermann’s new glasses on him. He fumbled the case out of one pocket and handed them over. “Here, so I picked these up, right? And right after that I went across the street to the supermarket.” 

Hermann opened the case and took out his new glasses. He removed his old ones and put the new ones on, looking across the room and humming with approval at the clarity. “Yes, then what happened,” he asked, and turned his attention back to Newt. 

“I went in, and there was this guy coming out. Oh, sorry, go back. So I’d just put my new glasses on, right? That’s important to know. Okay, so anyway...this guy, he—” 

Newt interrupted himself when he saw Hermann’s expression. “Uh, what’s wrong?” he said. He hadn’t even gotten to the freaky part yet and Hermann’s jaw was already practically on the floor. Newt waved a hand in front of Hermann’s face, but despite Hermann’s clearly focusing on Newt, he was frozen in place, and did not respond. 

“Hermann,” Newt snapped. But Hermann just kept staring. He slowly raised his hand to pull his glasses down off his nose, then push them back up, then pull them back down again. He gawped at Newt, his expression turning from shock to something like anguish. 

“Hermann,” Newt pleaded. “What’s _wrong?_ ”

 

 


End file.
